The Great Human Odyssey – Coming Soon to Curio.ca!

Take a journey around the world and back in time with anthropologist Dr. Niobe Thompson, and discover the miracle of our species.

The three-part documentary series and interactive web documentary The Great Human Odyssey – coming soon to Curio.ca with a teacher resource guide – explores the unlikely survival and the miraculous emergence of Homo sapiens as the world’s only global species.

Ancient climate research has revealed that we evolved during the most volatile era since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Just like the many other kinds of human who once shared our world, we should have died away. Instead, our species survived to populate every corner of the planet, against all the odds.

Over 18 months of filming, Niobe followed in the footsteps of our ancestors across locations on five continents, working with 22 Canadian, American and South African cinematographers, including aerials, underwater, and ultra-slow motion specialists. Equipped with the next generation of ultraHD 4K cameras, film crews worked in some of the most hostile environments on Earth, including Arctic Siberia, remote South Pacific islands, tropical rainforests and African deserts.

After watching the series, immerse yourself in a virtual reality experiment, walking in the shoes of Kalahari Bushmen, Chukchi reindeer herders or Badjao free-divers, through the interactive web documentary. A parallel crew of cinematographers and web developers worked alongside the film crew on location to animate these fascinating cultures through POV video interactions.

Be sure to visit The Great Human Odyssey site – packed with interviews, mini-documentaries, image galleries and text information to give audiences a rich and visually exciting tour of the science and filmmaking techniques behind The Great Human Odyssey.

About

For over 20 years, the combined team of CBC Learning and Radio-Canada Contenus
éducatifs have been offering educators access to Canada's premier educational programming

Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter and stay up to date with our latest releases!